Damien's Afro-Egyptian Experience

A holiday blog for recording what goes on.

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Singapore airport

Well we're now at Singapore airport after a 9 hour flight from Johannesburg. It's 6.44am and the plane leaves for Melbourne at 9.55am and we are wondering what the hell we are going to do for the next 3 hours.
The morning after the winery tour was better than expected. I pulled up fairly well and so did Dave. We caught the 11am ferry to Robben Island which is the site that Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 29 years imprisonment. The tour was led by one of the former political prisoners who had been kept at the jail. It's now basically a World Heritage site open for tours. He walked us through the place, telling us what various rooms were for and telling us stories about some of the brutality that they faced. Some of it quite tough to hear. As well as political prisoners, they also used to keep some fairly hard-core criminals yet it was the political prisoners who received the worst treatment. It was very interesting hearing all about it and everyone shook the guy's hand when we left. We then were driven around the island in a mini-bus and told about how it also used to be a leper colony back in the days and we saw some of the islands wildlife (various sorts of antelope, a couple of tortoises, african penguins) etc.
The rest of the day was spent doing a little shopping and drinking the local beers. That turned into nighttime as well although I piked and got back to my room at about 11.30pm. Dave finally showed up at 3.30am. With a 6.30am wake up call this morning, he didn't do too bad.
That's it for me. Gotta go find something to do.

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